Jane Walters

I had a real problem knowing what to call this ancestor.  She was born and married as Jean but her banns named her as Janet and she appeared as Jane in every census.  In addition she was Waters or Walters until her marriage but her father William was Watters at his marriage and her son Allan was born to Jean Walter!  You would be forgiven in thinking I was possibly mixing up different people but the evidence points to the same person throughout.  Allan Old the baker was born to David Old and Jean Walter, married as the son of David Old and Jane Waters and died, the son of David Old and Jane Walters so we can see that it is clearly the same person.  I think we can assume that, just like my own mother, she used Jean as her everyday name but Jane when it came to officialdom.  In addition, some officialdom even thought that Jane was a diminutive of Janet.  Jean/Jane/Janet Waters/Watters/Walters/Walter is one of the best examples we have of the need to be flexible in searching for records.

Jean was born to William Walters, a basket maker from the Kirkgate in Leith and we can be certain of this from birth, marriage and death records but her mother is a bit of a mystery.  Her birth is attributed to Jean Milne from Lady Yesters parish which is up the Bridges in Edinburgh but at her death her mother's maiden name is given as Gilchrist.  Referring to her marriage for the casting vote doesn't work as the mother isn't named at all.  Interestingly though, the minister is a Rev Gilchrist!  There is no record of William Walters marrying Jean Milne but there is one of him (a basketmaker still) marrying a Mary Gilfillan.  There were no children by this marriage and it was before William started having children with Jean Milne so maybe he did marry Mary, she died young and he remarried.  Could this all be a bit muddled in the mists of time and whoever reported her death vaguely remembered being told all this and misquoted the name?  Gilchrist and Gilfillan could be confused, I suppose.  That's my theory anyway.  I believe the birth record is far more likely to be correct as it was recorded at the time, not 84 years later, and William Walters basketmaker had several children around the time including a Jean in 1802.  It's bad enough trying to trace records back but when inaccurate data is thrown in it makes it doubly so. 

Fellow researcher Iain Old has pointed out that most of the Walters families in Scotland come from Caithness and he speculates that maybe both families or some members at least, moved down together with Oals but this still has to be fully investigated.

Jean was born in the Canongate parish which is the area outside the old city walls at the Netherbow down to the Palace of Holyrood.  Low Calton was a poor area round the bottom of Calton Hill and that is where she and possibly David were living at the time of her marriage.  There was a 70 year old Jane Walters, married to William Walters Basket Maker, who died in the Canongate in 1861.  The details don't all tie in neatly but there is a chance this is Jean Milne, Janet's mother.  There does seem to be more than one basket maker called William Walters though and the Scottish naming conventions mean that cousins could easily have the same name while working in the family business.

Moving to the country at Roslin was a good idea as both Janet and David lived well into their 80s.